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Shirley Holmes of Clarks Summit looks over photographs and items from her experiences in the military during WWII. MIchael J. Mullen / Staff Photographer

MICHAEL J. MULLEN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Clarks Summit resident Shirley Holmes discusses some of her experiences as a WAC (Women’s Army Corps) during World War II. She served both stateside and in England with the 8th Air Force.

Shirley Holmes wanted more than anything to serve her country. And she was not about to let her poor vision prevent that from happening.

Neither the Navy nor the Marines would have her, precisely because of her nearsightedness.

The Army let her in, though, and was better for it.

Mrs. Holmes spent World War II as a member of the Women’s Army Corps, or the WACs, as they were known for short.

Stateside initially, she eventually was sent to England to serve with the 8th Air Force as a clerk-typist at a replacement depot in Stone, Staffordshire.

Though they didn’t serve in combat, WACs like Mrs. Holmes nonetheless performed an invaluable service in the war effort.

“I really wanted to go overseas,” said Mrs. Holmes, a Clarks Summit resident and retired Abington Heights social studies teacher. “I think everyone did. They told us we were lucky if we got chosen.”

Sense of duty

The only child of the late John and Laura Sweet, Mrs. Holmes graduated from Dunmore High School in 1940, then went to work for Bell Telephone as a draftswoman. Meanwhile, she was taking night courses at St. Thomas College.

When the United States entered the war, she was intent on joining the fight. The Armed Forces were in need not only of able-bodied young men to fight the Germans and Japanese, but also of young women who could serve in ways other than nursing.

“I felt that, because I was the only one in my family, I had to join,” Mrs. Holmes said.

Mrs. Holmes’ uncle had served in the Navy, so she really wanted to be a WAVE, or Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service.

After being denied by the Navy and then the Marines, she turned her attention to the Army. WAC was intially an auxiliary unit called the WAAC but the one “A” eventually was dropped and it was made an official part of the Army.

Enlisting in 1943 at 21, Mrs. Holmes was part of the first class of Pennsylvania WACs. They did their training at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia. They took classes in military history and phys ed, and did a lot of marching, “because a lot of people weren’t in very good shape,” Mrs. Holmes said.

“It was good to enlist with a whole group of Pennsylvanians. We had a real sense of camaraderie,” she said. “The instructors were nice to us. It was their first time being officers, too.”

In early 1944, Mrs. Holmes received her first assignment to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, where the Army Air Forces tested new bomber, fighter and military transport planes.

As a clerk-typist, Mrs. Holmes made five copies of every request for supplies. “You had to be careful who you went and talked to, because everything was so secret,” she said.

In addition, she was enlisted to work on a base radio show produced and written by two sergeants named McCready and Wood, whose skits were “corny but good.” While at St. Thomas College, Mrs. Holmes had taken radio production and writing courses, dreaming of a career writing for Jack Benny or “Fibber McGee and Molly.” She also had done some on-air commercial spots with legendary local announcer Bill Pierce.

“We did skits, mostly,” Mrs. Holmes said. “I would go up and sit and talk with (McCready and Wood) and sometimes ideas would come. And sometimes an idea we thought was superb, but then (the higher-ups) would go, ‘No. No, you can’t do that.’”

“And it was pretty corny,” she added with a laugh. “We got a lot of ideas from the fellas on the base.”

Sent to England

Mrs. Holmes and her comrades did a show in Cleveland the night before the Allied invasion of Normandy. The next month, she found herself on the ocean liner RMS Aquitania, bound for Europe.

Upon arrival, she headed to her assigned replacement depot in Stone, a town in England’s West Midlands.

Her duties were straightforward but important. She and the other WACs on base were responsible for preparing the papers needed for pilots being sent to the East Anglia air base to take part in bombing runs over Germany, as well as for those who had survived their missions and were going back to the states.

She stayed on top of the news from the front lines. What looked to be a rout for the Allies following D-Day quickly bogged down after a few setbacks against the Germans.

On Christmas Day 1944, Mrs. Holmes and the others at her base worked dilligently as American GIs on the continent fought the Battle of the Bulge in brutally cold winter conditions. It was, according to Mrs. Holmes, “a day of hope and anxiety.”

“December 25th was cold and magically beautiful, almost the stuff of fantasy,” Mrs. Holmes wrote in a reminiscence she prepared for her family members to read. “Every twig, every branch, every shrub, was sheathed in ice. It was, of course, not a holiday in the sense that we know a holiday today.”

Subhead

Ultimately, the Allies prevailed in that decisive battle, setting up the inevitable march toward the war’s conclusion.

When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Mrs. Holmes was discharged from the WAC, yet continued to work for the Army as a civilian.

First, the Army sent her to bombed-out Frankfurt, Germany, to type reports as part of the rebuilding effort. She and the other Americans got along well enough with the Germans there, although there was a real tension between the sides, she said.

“Frankfurt had been so heavily bombed by us and the British, they didn’t really like us,” she said. “But they were over achieving, trying to be good because they worked for us then.”

From there, Mrs. Holmes went to Switzerland to assist with the process of rounding up translators for the Nuremberg war crimes trials. There, she dealt with a number of Austrian, Italian, Polish and German refugees looking for work.

Finally, three years after entering the Army, Mrs. Holmes got on with the next phase of her life, forever proud and thankful that she had the opportunity to serve her country during wartime.

“I loved it,” she said. “It’s whatever you make of it. I tried a lot of things I never tried before. ... I was just one of the cogs that kept it all running.”

Professional: Retired Abington Heights School District social studies teacher

Military experience:

During World War II, Mrs. Holmes served in England with the 8th Air Force as a member of the Women’s Army Corps, or WAC.

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